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Friday will mark the 16th birthday of bitcoin, the world’s first ever cryptocurrency.. Created by the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto on 3 January 2009, bitcoin has gone from a fringe experiment ...
A cryptocurrency, crypto-currency, or colloquially, crypto, is a digital currency designed to work through a computer network that is not reliant on any central authority, such as a government or bank, to uphold or maintain it.
Since the creation of bitcoin in 2009, the number of new cryptocurrencies has expanded rapidly. [1]The UK's Financial Conduct Authority estimated there were over 20,000 different cryptocurrencies by the start of 2023, although many of these were no longer traded and would never grow to a significant size.
Finney downloaded the bitcoin software the day it was released, and received 10 bitcoins from Nakamoto in the world's first bitcoin transaction on 12 January 2009 (block 170). [ 25 ] [ 26 ] Other early supporters were Wei Dai , creator of bitcoin predecessor b-money , and Nick Szabo , creator of bitcoin predecessor bit gold . [ 16 ]
While Bitcoin may have been the first major cryptocurrency to hit the market — it debuted in 2009 — many others have become highly popular, even if not quite as large as the original.
Within two days, it became the 19th most valuable form of cryptocurrency in the world, with a total trading value of nearly $13 billion, and a total of $29 billion worth of trades based on a $64 value of each of the 200 million tokens issued by the afternoon of January 19th.
Since Bitcoin was the largest and most popular cryptocurrency, everything else was defined in relation to it. So, whatever was not Bitcoin was lumped into a catch-all category called altcoins .
Taxonomy of money, based on "Central bank cryptocurrencies" by Morten Linnemann Bech and Rodney Garratt. Digital currency (digital money, electronic money or electronic currency) is any currency, money, or money-like asset that is primarily managed, stored or exchanged on digital computer systems, especially over the internet.